This Circle
by droidgirl
Summary: Hell is filled with people we know: Spike and Halfrek talk, after the Season 6 episode "Older and Far Away"


He shouldn't have been surprised to find her waiting in the shadows of his crypt, seated on the stone coffin that dominated his living room. But he found himself caught off guard anyway, even though he hid it well.

"Hello William," she said, lips curved gently in an unfamiliar smile. She never used to smile at him before, back when he had been alive.

"Cecily. Nice of you to drop by." he shrugged his coat off and tossed it carelessly aside. "Now get the hell out."

"That's not very nice." she sounded reproving. Her legs were primly crossed, while her clasped hands rested over the top of her knees.

"Sorry. _Please_ get the hell out." he amended. Stalking over to his armchair, he fished out a lighter from his pocket and fumbled for a cigarette.

"I suppose you're still angry with me," Halfrek said, sounding less like a centuries old demon than a nervous woman asking for absolution.

"Please. I've been screwed over by so many other women since our last meeting. What you did was a drop in the bloody bucket." Spike scoffed, although neither were fooled by his feigned nonchalance. With a casual flick of his wrist, his lighter flipped open, illuminating his pale face in the glow of wan firelight. Sticking a cigarette past his lips, he held the flame up and inhaled deeply, gratefully.

"William..." she took a breath.

"Stop calling me that. I'm not him. Not anymore." Spike growled.

"No, I don't suppose you are." Halfrek sighed. "I don't even know why I'm here. It's not like I'm speaking to the man I knew, just the demon who wears his skin."

"Oh and I suppose it's really that simple." Spike snorted, unable to keep the bitterness from his tone, unable to quash the irritation from rising up inside of him. It seemed every woman wanted to focus on that one detail, lately.

"For what it's worth," she said, pushing herself off the coffin. "I'm sorry. I truly am."

"For what?" he asked.

"If you must know, the last time we met...the things I said..." she paused. He looked at her expectantly. "I said them because I knew it would have driven you to leave. I was trying to save you."

"Save me from what?" he frowned. She stared at him, and then the penny dropped. He started to laugh.

"They died horrible, painful deaths." Halfrek said. "One of the best projects in my portfolio if you must know."

"Oh God...imagine that." he leaned back, body still shaking from laughter. "You were trying to save me. Good job Cece, way to go. Behold the glory of your success."

"Yes, I..." she hesitated. "Willi...Spike. Listen to me."

His chuckles subsided. She walked closer to the tiny and only window in the room, and gazed outwards in an almost dreamy fashion. Moonlight fell against her alabaster skin, and for a moment, he was William once more, tracing the outline of her profile in silent admiration.

It was easy to forget how much blood stained both their hands.

"By the time you met me, I'd been in the vengeance game for millenia. Longer than Anyanka had been alive, truth be told." Halfrek said. "I've lived long, and seen much. In my lifetime, empires rose, flourished and fell, their very memories crumbled to dust. I've seen great wars, and much death…some I delivered, most I only witnessed. I've made love to men and women, who all decayed and returned to the nothing from which they sprang."

"Yes, you're old. I get it." Spike drawled, feeling William slipping away once more, although he was not quite gone. No – William was dead, but never gone, and perhaps that was the greatest tragedy of all. It was as if the demon inside him had become so entangled in his lingering humanity, that it failed to tell the difference one way or another.

"I have done all that, seen things you couldn't even begin to comprehend," her voice was gentle now. "But no one had ever looked at me the way you did."

She turned to him with eyes that were old and tired.

"I was trying to save you that night. I hope you believe me."

Spike exhaled, letting the burnt out cigarette fall from his limp fingers onto the cold ground.

They watched the smoke curl away into nothing.

"Thank you." he said quietly, at last. "Not that it matters I suppose. I was meant to die that night, one way or another."

"Yes, I do suppose it was. Meant to be, that is." She sounded almost like the girl he had once loved, sadness woven into her voice like a braid. Between them, the years yawned like a gaping chasm.

"For old time's sake," she said, starting to walk towards his doorway and out of his life once more, "I will tell you this: leave this place. Leave now, if you can."

"What?" Spike frowned, feeling his shoulders tensing.

"Something is stirring. Something old and very hungry. A war is coming, and it's going to start right here," she was halfway turning towards him. Her face was cast in shadow, but he could almost see the demon under the thin human veneer she wore.

"I don't..."

"Consider it a warning for old time's sake. For the William I knew...the William I had once...Spike, leave. Please." her heels clicked on the stone steps, faster now.

"I can't," he said, standing up. "I can't. I've chosen my side, and it's always going to be beside her."

She peered over her shoulder at him.

"You love well, even if you don't always love wisely," she said.

With that, she was gone, past his threshold and into the night.

"Bloody women. Is it too much to ask of them to make even a lick of sense?" Spike said at last, into empty air. "I don't know why I even bother."

When he slept that night though, it was with a strangely lighter heart, and a peace he hadn't yet known in death.


End file.
